Hunabka writes: I’ve been tasked to re-provision old hardware for an off-site file server. The machine has 2X Xeon E5440 CPUs, 12GB of memory, and 7 Disk Raid 5 with 1 Hot Spare, no warranty. This client does not have any IT staff at the remote location, any hardware issues will require additional cost for support. The plan is to install Server 2012 and enable DFS for the remote office file storage.

My question is: Do I install Server 2012 on the Bare Metal or install a hypervisor (VMware ESXi) Then 2012? Other options or ideas?

Problems with VMware: Our monitoring agent does not support ESXi and it does not look like the ESXi (Free version) supports SNMP monitoring. Although I do get hardware status just no emailing of errors.

Problems with Bare Metal: If anything does go wrong and on-site visit will require physical support staff.

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